BlackBEAT 08 Keynote by Mistress Max Rulz

At BlackBEAT this year we had an amazing keynote address from Mistress Max Rulz. I am reposting it here with permission in its entirety. You can read more about her here. I have been informed this link was no longer current.

The answer to the question can we all just get along? Is no!

Most of you would say the answer is no

I remember when i first said i wanted to do this speech, the response i got was —— omg if i have to listen to another we should be united speech i am going to throw up. Some of you may feel the same—admit it!

I had to think about that too. I have listened to too many unity in the community public love letters as well; at least that’s what i call them. I thought to myself lord what have i gotten myself into? Now, i have given a lot of thought to this over the last year.

And let me tell you, the universe has greatly assisted me in my research. I have had more tests- debates, discussions, arguments, and standoffs. I have even fussed online with regards to this issue– i thought, with all of that, what could i possibly say that would have any real meaning?

An old phrase poped up in my head and i found myself going over it again and again. A phrase i heard often as a kid,

You can fool all of the peole some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

I thought ok, so are we fooling ourselves with this whole unity thing?

Now i know historically that is not true; hell the fact that we are here as a group today speaks to that truth.

We’ve gotten together and done all sorts of things ——all sorts of positive.things. As black people it is most evident a whole bunch of people must have gotten together and done something,

And not the famous ones either.

I recall hearing about a whole lot of people who did not get on the bus——— —– for a long time.

Now that was a determined bunch.

I remember hearing about some folks getting awfully familiar with some dogs and water hoses, and it was not an s & m party; yet they still kept coming together.

So i am thinking about this– all the people all the time saying and i began to substitute other words for fool.

Words like love, you can love some of the people some of the time——- but most certainly not all of them. —all the time! Or all of them some of the time even!!!!!

I also substitued words like resepct, believe, enjoy, you can enjoy some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time and ——that is a dam shame ain’t it?

I substituted phrases like take care of, get along with, want to be with etc…

Any way this dialog was getting me nowhere, because it certainly meant the answer to us all getting along was a resounding hell to the no.

But then i would go back to— that is not possible! I thought—maybe it is not a matter of the answer perhaps the importance lies in asking the right question. Maybe rodney king’s question was wrong, i said to myself ok! There must be a different question to be asked.

Ok? ——ok! —– oh shit that’s it—ok!!!!!! Yes ok! That’s it! That is it! Maybe we can just be ok!!!!!!! We can just be ok with each other? Just ok.

Dick gregory a prominent comedian and activist of the 60’s understood ok he used to say “i will not knock a steak out of your plate but i will not let you put a porkchop in mine”

Ok is the amereican abreviation of the greek words ola calla which means all good.

Seems our black youth have had the answer all the time, ———–“it’ s all good”.

Now, hold up—- let’s not start doing kumbaya yet, as black kat put it in the first town hall meeting “ every muthafuckah ain’t alright”there is a difference! Let us not get that twisted.

But let’s put this in terms of family

This family idea is not based in some la la land—— family is difficult— ——— —- way difficult.

Ok, for example every family has some version of the drunken relative, the crackhead cousin, maybe even the pedifile uncle.

Sometimes it’s about tough love, but its still love.

You have to watch your liquor around aunt sue, and you don’t allow the crackhead carl to house sit while you are on vacation.

Even with family we must apply wisdom.

The thing is no matter what form of assholery someone practices they are still family.

You can not unmake them family, you simply deal with them with a long handled spoon as the old ones would say. You use wisdom!

You know uncle chester’is a child molester—- —– so you don’t let him babysit the fucking kids!!!.

We cannot afford to just ignore them hoping they will go away or act like they do not even exist. You just ignore them and you will not have a home, the kids will be in therapy for years, and you wont have a chair to sit on must less a drink to calm your nerves to deal with the whole affair.

Now how does that relate to the leather family?

It’s not so much different in the leather family

There are crazy people up in here too, i know that is news to some of you.

When new mistress crazy queen of the univers read somewhere that everyone should kiss her feet when you get a chance you might want to let her know that it does not mean everyone literally. Let the woman know –don’t just let her keep going around pissing people off so that she will never learn anything.

When bubba the whipmaster is asking how to hold the damn thing minutes before he does a demo, for godssakes stop him. Speak up ! And if you cannot get thru send someone else to try. If that does not work—fuck it , move on, there are others who do wish to learn who will listen.

Again we use wisdom with family. You plan, you do interventions, you do what you have to so to ensure the whole family as much as possible is ok. `cause right, wrong or indifferent. Family is family, . Please keep on mind there is strength in numbers no matter what the question.

.

We can not afford not to think in these terms . Not to think in terms of family. We must seriously entertain this thought.

I am talking about take it out for dinner and have a few drinks with it.

Talk about it in depth with yourself.

Because you see ——– we are all in this tribe called kink.

This family —-the leather family ——–as it has grown——- has gone from a single family unit to a multi family tribe, complete with inlaws, first cousins, second cousins, and a bunch of people once removed, hell some of them have been removed twice. Some of them need to be removed now!

For many moons now tribes have survived by closing ranks, by banding together and protecting each other.

They slept together, ate together, hunted together, huddled together or they died! I would like to think—— no one outside regulated anyone’s individual hut, tipi, igloo or cave, but when they came together they acted accordingly- —— like a tribe—— a group—— a unit. Everyone was ok as a whole.

We are a tribe called kink.

The old guard– the new jack— gay— bi— het—i am not sure yet—- white— black— half white— half black and just aint not telling. Bdsm—fetichist— daddy—ms– – ds and some bs. Many clans— many family units—–still one tribe

Remember there is strength in numbers, no matter what the question. Yes we are all different yet we are all the different in our sameness—- — bottom line is we are all trying to be ok. Ok with ourselves— – in our own little kinky worlds ——our little part of this world.

—-lets look back a minute; 1848 marked the beginning of the woman’s rights movement.

160 years later we are basically still trying to move.

1955 black people wanted human rights —to a lot of people we still have nerve for asking for that.

But it’s ok because some say we have avoided being strange fruit since 1964.

1969 another movement a whole bunch of all kind of people– every walk of life— every everything got together and said my love does not look like yours.

Unfortunately there are still lgbt youth dying today as in just last month for their kink,

Each movement alone women’s, black, gay each movement is still struggling.

I don’t give a shit who got the presidential nomination.

We are still all struggling– — all of us in this room. And that is not ok! Every struggle can be broken down to several components including color, creed and cash however when you put them all together in this time —- it comes down to kink!!

Kink defined as any unconventional sexual preferences or behavior

You see there is an us and them. Yes make no mistake about it

There are many us in this room,

Them are those who want to impose the concept of conventional. .

They do not think we are ok —at all !

Even in their bickering and in house fighting about which sect is closer to god,

The concervatives, traditionalists, or new aged, the powers that be still band together to say all of our kinky asses are going to hell in a hand basket.

With a quickness— ——— ——— ——— — we all better learn to be ok— all of us. We already know what can happen when we pull together a whole bunch of us, history has taught us that over and over again. We stood together then, we have stood together on many issues, we must stand together now. Only ,what we protect now—— is the liberty of our sexual expression , we must be on guard at the doorway of our bedrooms. We may all have a different view of the valley and we each have our little spot picked out, but as we look out on that valley , we need to remember we are all standing on the perverbial mountian top of perversion. For all intents and purposes we are all perverts

It is defined in the dictionary as to turn away from the right course. So as blacks we are definitly off their course—as women we have just gotten all out of control—and omg the gay people!!!

As individual groups such as gay bi white black het cuddles, women or whatever— each individual group is a group that must be controlled.

Take all of these groups

Put them all together ——— altogether– —— we are an unstoppable force!

How do we become that force? How do we go from being a ripple in our own individual kinky ponds to an unstoppable sunami?

What will it take to transform us from a little group paddling our own kinky dingies to a undefeatable fleet of kinky warships?

Now that shit would be ok! Well it only takes a whole lot of individual people—- really being ok.and allowing the other family member to be that as well.

I would like to ask you to play another little game with me please, one i hope you take home to your families who could not be here and out to your groups and into your communities.

Since we are talking about being kinky and we are talking about being ok——–— –

Let’s pretend just for a few minutes that we all have the same last name ok?

You get my drift here? In this way we will remind ourselves that we are each ok in our own kink. And in fact truly in a family!!!

We will then bring to mind we are a family in kink. We will be reminded that as family we must defind our kink from within. Keeping in mind the crazy cousin and in-laws ———— ——-and also from without.

We must remember the barbarians are always at the gate. This may seem a small step, a small thing, yet we are so many and with small steps we can cover much distance much ground. We can —-make this ok—– we have made and allowed a lot of stupid shit to be ok.

Why can’t we band together and be ok on that which serves us. And that which will serve those who will follow us in the next generations?

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One thought on “BlackBEAT 08 Keynote by Mistress Max Rulz”

I like how one of the ‘related posts’ is ‘yeah, Mom, it’s Ok” 😀 This speech, well, rocks 🙂 I’m sitting here waiting for my friend and her kids to get here so we can go out to breakfast (hurry up, man, I’m HUNGRY!), and I’m going to tell her to read this 😀 It just. . makes sense (ok, I really want to say this speech ROCKS – but it’s deeper then that, you know?).

For some reason it also reminded me of my sister (not THAT one)(LOL). My 2nd younger sister. She used to go around randomly hugging people saying “I am your friend and I love you” (ok, by people I mean our extremely LARGE group of friends. . . and the occasional deserving stranger) 😀 And we STILL do it, especially if one of us is down or having a hard time. . . it’s like our secret code for “you know what? It’s ok, YOU’RE ok, you’re with us” 🙂